Why the World Needs Christ

By Joe Byrne    20th November 2002    0 responses

Where was God during the Holocaust?

What was God doing during the ethnic genocides of Rwanda and Bosnia?

Did God just turn a blind eye when the Twin Towers were struck or gaze impassionately as they crumbled into dust?

These are questions that are very often directed at Christians. What we rarely recognise is the recognition of our belief in a loving God. The premise of such questions comes from the conflict between knowledge and experience – how can a loving God allow such horrific events to take place? I do not intend to answer this question, indeed I would be arrogant to presume that I even had a clue what the answer might be. One thing I do know, though. In the modern world, even more so than in previous ages of history, the world needs Christ.

If we look at many problems in the world, they can be traced back to 2 basic factors; an ungodly view of the human race and an ungodly view of the role of the human race.

Where does human value come from? According to the Bible, we were created in the image of God, with the express purpose of entering into a deep relationship with our Maker. Thus our value comes from God; it is inherent and indestructible. The secular world removes God from the equation altogether, exposing humanity to assertions of values that come from humanistic thinking. Our worth as humans depend on any number of arbitrary and culturally relevant factors laid down by an ignorant and irrational human authority. Strength, intelligence, confidence (arrogance?), specific abilities and physical beauty are the hallmarks of the ‘best’ among our race. Some have even gone as far as sub-dividing humanity into separate races using such attributes as a means to elevate one ‘race’ as superior. Such thinking is deeply disturbing and thoroughly unbiblical and so it remains a moral regret for many Christians that some predecessors were vehement advocates of a social structure that clearly undermined the universal and unassailable worth of humanity.

Even with the universal acceptance of a Deity, one could still maintain a human population disparate in it’s value. A religion that depends on steadfast obedience to a regulative code as the means to salvation enables piety to be the justification for the division between supposedly superior and inferior beings.

Only in the grace of God, as demonstrated on the cross of Jesus Christ, do we regain our full humanity. Our worth is no longer subject to fickle human values nor the stringent code of a religion, but is found in our very being. We were created in the image of God to be the pinnacle of his creation existing in a full and right relationship with our God. No one can earn grace, no one can save themselves; Christ saves and God pours out his grace upon us. Therefore, in Christ we cannot boast, there is no superiority but there is the call to be humble, meek, to serve, to be patient kind, loving and faithful.

Thus, we can see our human worth through creation and salvation; God created mankind to know him and when man rebelled, God saved. God is not a God of compromise – we were fearfully and wonderfully made and when Jesus was sacrificed, it was entirely sufficient for the whole Human race for all time. In Christ we find that we are loved because we are made, Jesus’ death on the cross serves to demonstrate the incomprehensible depth of that love; the primary difference between those who are saved and those who are not is not based upon worth or value, but on their individual acceptance of God’s offer of salvation.

Secular society, particularly in the post-modern era, will continue to suffer from the problem of universal truth. The notion that humanity is inherently equal is by its very nature a universal statement and in a society that increasingly believes in relative truth, any universal truth becomes vulnerable to rejection. One can maintain a belief that humanity is equal, but as a subjective perspective – all the logic and evidence of a world seen without God would appear to demonstrate that humanity is anything but equal. One is entitled to that opinion as a subjective, personal truth but they have no authority to state it or even enforce it as a universal truth. Thus secular society is condemned to exist in a perpetual battle of subjective perspectives; as long as human worth can be undermined by humanistic value systems or moral relativism then oppression, torture, racism, subjugation, discrimination, war, genocide, terrorism and slavery will continue. This is not to say that non-Christians cannot and do not oppose such practices, but they have no moral basis to do so; their assertions are fallible and non-universal as they are derived from subjective opinion which is easily questioned and undermined.

The pre-cursor to acts of genocide, terrorism, racism and any other such acts, is the reduction of basic human worth, thus enabling the oppressor to view their act as justified; the racial group becomes inferior, the innocents caught up in the act are mere symbols of the ultimate target of the terrorists. As long as human worth is derived from our own view of ourselves and others, it will remain weak and unable to act as the universal principle that governs and protects the treatment of the vulnerable. Thus it becomes our primary responsibility, as Christians to preach the Gospel of Christ which confirms and secures our inherent human value as seen through the eyes of God the Creator, the ultimate authority in the Universe.

The second responsibility is one that is to be shared by all humanity, regardless of their recognition or not of God as creator. The command to mankind was “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28 ESV) God has placed us as stewards of his creation, in authority over the earth with the responsibility of caring for it and making the most of its resources. One only has to look at numerous environmental problems to realise that we have quite deliberately plundered the Earth of its natural resources for profit and selfish gain. The result is a disastrous legacy for our descendants – something that can be recognised regardless of any belief in God. For Christians, the state of our planet should be an even more pressing concern because we know that we are ultimately answerable to God for the way we have treated the wonderful planet he created for us – a world so perfect in its detail that the slightest fluctuation in distance from the Sun, would make human life impossible; a world so complex that it has taken many hundreds of thousands of years for us to even begin to discover some of the deep intricacies and wonders of nature. Instead we turn a blind eye to the irresponsible stewardship of our times; we fail to challenge our society on it’s “here and now” culture which is so obviously damaging the environment and bringing further misery and hardship to many people. Society must recognise that being masters of creation means responsible and careful stewardship, not the abuse of God-given authority.

So where was God during the Holocaust, September 11th and other horrific atrocities throughout history? I remain hesitant to speculate, but I imagine God wept to see such brutality and hateful acts being committed against and by his precious and loved creation. I imagine he wished that these people made in his own image could only look on each other the way he looked on them. I imagine he yearned for each one who died, and each one who killed to have come to know him as their Heavenly Father, their Maker and their God. Enough of such conjecture. As long as human society is based on human values and human worth dependent on arbitrary human qualities, poverty, starvation, torture, racial hatred, genocide, war, violence and cruelty will remain. In Christ, humanity has an inherent and insatiable value. As long as the planet is run by God-less political and corporate stewards, humanity will not fulfil the God-given responsibility as stewards of creation. The world needs help. The world needs love. The world needs peace. The world needs Christ.

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